Our news editor Ruth Smith was able to interview the new Beverley Hughes, Dawn Primarolo, today. You'll be able to read her interview in next week's CYP Now but in the meantime, Dawn said she was keen to find out what our readers thought should be her priorities in her new role. What would you do if you were children's minister, she wants to know. So here's your chance. Speak up!

I beleive that we have, as a society, lost respect for children (and families) as individuals. Standardised testing in schools, prescribed curriculums that teachers can no longer deviate from in order to taylor,  their teaching to individuals, paranoia about 'safeguarding' issues, targets, inspections, monitoring; laws and sanctions that seek to enforce controlled uniformity, off the peg solutions to a diversity of problems (real or potential) that end up being costly tick box exercises that dont solve the problem.

For example the latest report on the review of elective home education (Badman report) which was commissioned to look into the ability of LAs to ssafeguard children educated at home. It concluded that there was no evidence that this group was at any more risk than school educated children and yet went on to recommend a whole raft of measures that have enraged home educators and are totally unworkable on the grounds of cost never mind anything ellse.

I think the children's minister should concentrate on finding best practice in a selection of different sectors and put effort into publicising and praising these widely. This is much more likely to build a culture that values and supports every individual child within its own family, culture, and community, than any amount of monitoring or legislation will. Solutions are built at point of need by people who have been inspired, not by mass market, imposed rulings.

The most important thing is to protect children and young people's welfare, to create a safe space where they can grow and develop as individuals.

To this end, I suggest that you protest the diversion of funds away from children known to be at risk, and towards the yearly assessment of educational provision in happy, healthy home-educating families - as recommended by the Badman Report into Elective Home Education. 

I refer you to cases which are often quoted such as that of Victoria Climbie. The foundation set up in her name protests that she was neither hidden nor home-educated:

"The Victoria Climbié Foundation UK is genuinely concerned about the link being made between Victoria Climbié and home education, and Victoria as a hidden child. Victoria was neither home-educated nor hidden. The reality is that there is no such thing as a 'hidden' child, only children who are allowed to fall through the gaps. The key issue here is how statutory services interact with children that are known within the child protection system."

I ask you also to consider the effect on young children of strangers, perhaps hostile, demanding entry to their homes (on pain of criminal proceedings) and taking them away for interview on their own, without their parents support.  Many home-educators have had difficult interactions with hostile LEA officials, and are deeply fearful of what their children might suffer if left alone with them. This intrusion into what should be a child's sanctuary is in itself abusive.

I ask you to protect the civil liberties of children, their right to a safe space in which to grow and to enable for them an education suitable to their age and abilities.  Please remember that on the whole parents have their children's best interests at heart, that abusers are a tiny minority and that the state should never be the guardian of first resort.

Please use all your influence to have the Badman report rejected.  . 

The Badman report is dangerous, invasive and laking in intelligence, must be rejected to protect civil liberties. 

Ms Primarolo:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Please urgently investigate the flawed Badman report into Elective Home Education.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         It is hard even to know where to begin with its faults:

The report itself goes way beyond its brief, and the recommendations bear no logical relationship to the report findings (there is no evidence that EHE is used as a cover for child abuse, but let's legislate as though it were...). The report is poorly researched - the author clearly has NO understanding of educational philosophies and approaches beyond the conventional, and what he does not understand he has disregarded.

The report uses selective misquoting in spinning a particular viewpoint (please compare the CofE quotation in the report with their full submission to the review - I suspect more than a few CofE representatives are not best pleased by the way their views have been misrepresented). It is not evidence-based (hardly can be, given that the phrase "I believe..." 16 times!), is prejudiced, does not represent the responses to the review, and was partially pre-judged, since Badman said publically before he had finished gathering information that the status quo could not remain. It is hardly independent, authored as it is by a chair of BECTA and previuos head of Kent Children's Services, and almost every member of his "expert" panel is also government employed in one way or another. Not even a token HEer among them... (quite how they were regarded as "expert" I do not know).

The recommendations of the report are massively problematic. To mention only the largest problems:

- Badman suggests giving powers to LA employees to detain (ie insist on interviewing) HEing families without probable cause. Compulsory interviews are contrary to the basic principle of innocent until proven guilty. There are other, well established, ways for EHEers to provide evidence that an education is taking place according to the law, and they are contained in the 2007 guidance for LAs. And, in a recent survey, 77% of HEed children said they do not want to be interviewed by LA staff (http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/results-of-poll.html) - are their preferences to be entirely disregarded? Apparently so.

- Badman suggests giving powers to LA employees to enter private homes without probable cause. As you know, even the police do not have this power.

- Badman suggests giving power of veto over HE provision (its style or it happening at all) to LA employees. Rather than them having power to gather evidence and take a HE family to court, they would now have the power to act as prosecutor, judge and jury if they were in charge of granting or withholding registration. To have the final decision about whether an education provided is within the law or not resting with the courts, as now, grants us a level of protection from the ex-school teachers and ex-OFSTED inspectors who tend to populate LA education departments. There is no reason why they would be able to recognise or appreciate an education which doesn't look like school-at-home, and they absolutely must not be given power over those of us who choose to educate in unconventional, but perfectly reasonable, ways.

Underpinning all of this is the potential overturning of the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

I understand that all of this stems from a level of hysteria about child protection. Please, as you formulate policy, keep reciting the mantra that we are innocent until proven guilty, or should be. And that HEed children are MASSIVELY more likely to be known to social services (twice as likely, as Badman says, although he remains curiously silent about the reasons...) than the general population - often because of having a SN and therefore having a case worker, or because of malicious referrals by the LA (standard procedure on learning of a HEing family in some areas - and they wonder why we don't voluntarily engage with them!), by neighbours who do not understand that HE is legal etc etc. There are already responsibilities within the community to report child protection concerns.

Given all this, why on EARTH did Mr Balls accept the report and immediately open a consultation? I suggest that you put pressure on him to withdraw his acceptance of the report and to urgently reconsider the labour party's priorities. Do you really believe that the State should be parent of first rather than last resort? Please talk to your department lawyers about how the proposals fundamentally reconfigure the relationship between the state and the family, and ask yourselves whether going down the route of 1930s Germany (as proudly trumpeted in Badman's report as a precedent!!!) is really something for which your party wishes to be remembered.

NO reasearch No evidence- fantastic lets implement it then  !

I echo what has been said about the recommendations in this report and urge the government to reconsider this report  and then put it in the bin where it belongs.

please use the resources to fund the known safeguarding issues  that Social Services cannot keep up with due to their lack of funding and intense case load.

Please look very carefully at the Badman review into the law concerning home education! There is no evidence anywhere in the report that home education is a cover for abuse of children and yet we are being treated as guilty until proven innocent! Local Authorities will have the power to come into our homes and interview our children on their own - even the police cannot do that! The assumption is that a child will speak to a complete stranger and tell them if they are being abused - this is completely ridiculous!

If this does become law, you can be sure it will affect all children eventually because if they can do it for home educated kids there will be nothing to stop them being able to speak to all children this way.What about children's rights? Most parents home educating their children have made sacrifices and thought long and hard about this way of life - not all children will fit into the 'school mould' and should be allowed to learn in their own way, at their own pace! Please help!

The rights of my children are under immediate threat due to the Badman Review into home education.  The report proposes significant violations of civil liberties, human rights and will require serious changes to the law to permit one on one access to children and right of entry to the home.

The authors hope, that this report will lead to improved relationships between local authorities and home educating families, is fatally flawed as implementing such authoritarian recommendations could only lead to putting significant strain on what are already tense relationships between the interested parties. The report proves that there are already significant controls in place and that the only issue is one of implementation by the individual local authorities.

If all local authorities displayed the flexibility and ingenuity of the four LA's listed in section 5 then there would have been no need for this report in the first place. Since all children are on “Contact Point” there is no need for a register, the rules work as they stand so to implement these recommendations would only add to the budget requirements of the DCSF and local authorities and add to unnecessary duplication. I would have to add from a personal note that if these recommendations are implemented I would seriously consider leaving the country and returning to Scotland where the government there displays a modicum of common sense.

 I think, since you ask, that your first priority needs to be to truly safeguard the wide variety of educational choices available to children.  If the Badman report's recommendations are carried out children will have no real freedom to engage with the educational philosophy that best suits them.  Currently parents (and therefore children) have the choice, should the state education fails them or not suit them, to choose to be home educated.  If home education is controlled by the state (as Badman recommends) the much vaunted choice that parents and children have will be meaningless. 

Teachers in school, in the interests of trying to have student centred learning (recognised to be the best approach) often pretend to give students choice by saying they can have either a) or b).  This is manipulative and intends to deceive the student into believing they have choice when they don't really; and as a personalisation of learning device it inevitably fails.  If this behaviour is applied to the children's parents, the chance for any child to really have free choice in education is removed altogether. 

All children's and parents' rights are being denied with the Badman report recommendations.  Please make the removal of this threat to our civil liberties a priority.

Thank you for asking the views of families.  So often we seem to be reaching out over a vast gulf to those who are allegedly elected to represent us and support our views.

 Along with many other respondents I would ask you to look carefully at the Badman review and attendant consultation now in train from the DCSF.  Home Educating families are a minority, but that does not make us wicked or abusive.  We may be different becuase of our views and committment to our children's education.  But that does not make us worthy of singly out and the vilification Mr Badman proposes.  It is this identification and sterotyping of minorities which is the start of a very slippery and dangerous slope indeed.

In particular I would ask you to consider the reccommendation made in the review that LEA staff should have the right to enter the home of a family who home educate, with or without consent; and interview the child, regardless of age, without a parent or other trusted adult present.  This draconian power is not afforded to the police, social services, HMRC, UKBA or any other statutory or regulatory body.  Anyone who wishes or needs to enter the home of another without consent must do so only with a warrant or court order. Why should this safeguard be removed from families simply becuase they choose to home educate? 

No-one wants to see a child harmed.  But there is no evidence at all to suggest that those who home educate place thier children at greater risk than those who do not.  Please direct funds, resources and law to protect the children who need protection.  Not to persecute a minority because of thier views.

I could go on and detail far more of concern in this review and associated reccomendations; but I'm sure many others will do so also.  Please give this report detailed consideration and take the view of groups such as Education Otherwise. 

PLEASE read all the reply's that have come before mine, I echo what everyone say's about the Badman Report.

- I could repeat what has already been said but I think the message is clear. Something needs to be done to stop Badman's recommendations going any further - because they are just WRONG plain and simple.

One size of Education DOES NOT fit all and we need to have options and choices for our children. Schools as they stand today are not safe, successful or happy places to be for many children and we need to know that we will be supported FAIRLY if we, as caring, thinking parents, decide that we need to choose a different style and environment for our children to continue their education.

Changes can be made to the systems as they stand today, to support and provide for Home Educated children, BUT, the changes recommended by Mr Badman and accepted by Mr Balls are not the right changes to make. We need support and resources to be available as and when we need them but we dont need to be controlled and dictated too. - We, as parents, have nothing but our love for, and the best interests of, our children as motives. Can we say the same about the Government and LEA officials if the recommendations are carried out? - I am sad and worried to say that personally - I think not.

 Support the family unit. Research has shown time and again that children do best educationally, socially and emotionally when living in a loving, stable family. Campaign for tax allowance sharing for parents; give parents the financial option to stay at home and not pour money constantly in to child care allowances forcing mothers out to work when they would rather be at home with their children; promote the importance of mothers and fathers and make it clear that they are the main carers of their children not the state.